PLAYING IT COOL

When it’s 114 degrees outside no one has to tell me that, “It’s officially summer.” However, the weather certainly becomes a conversational icebreaker. Someone should really invent a stopwatch that pinches a person’s wrist the third time he says, “It’s hot outside.” When you live in the desert, everyone should know that summer means HOT! Unusual weather is the kind you get only when you are on vacation somewhere else---anywhere else.

When someone asks me, “Doesn’t it get hot in Tucson in the summer?” I always say, “Yes it’s terrible. I think you should move to Florida.” We already have enough people who have moved here. Until the monsoon rains arrive, with their spectacular lightening shows over the mountains, the Arizona heat is very dry. It feels something like sticking your head into an oven. I still find that preferable to (my Florida friends please forgive me) breathing in the swamp air in Florida, a place that gets so hot and humid that the dampness curls your toes.

As Mark Twain said, “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” Some people hate London when it’s not raining. Go figure. I guess they say, “Oh, Dear, it’s not raining again.”

I find hot weather much less annoying than the people who complain about it. It’s not the heat, it’s the birdbrains who move to the desert and then say, “Wow, It’s hot in the desert.”

Of course, no one would live here if it weren’t for that cool fellow, Willis Carrier, who invented the first modern air conditioner in Buffalo, New York. No wonder Buffalo is so cold in the winter.  Residential air conditioning was introduced in the 1920’s that enabled migration to the Sun Belt.

A few years ago, I took a river cruise on an old tub to Portugal. The air conditioner broke down, and since it was American made, they couldn’t get a part until after we limped to the next port. It was then, that I was happy I was a desert rat.  I had learned what the natives did in the summer heat in Tucson, before air conditioning was invented. I took the top sheet off of my bed, dampened it with cold water, wrapped myself in that wet sheet, and opened the balcony door. I cooled off the old fashioned way---covering my head when the flying bugs attacked.  It was kind of like an over heated horror movie.

While waiting for the cooling monsoon rains, I remind myself of the blizzards in Chicago, the icy roads in South Dakota, and shoveling mountains of snow in Indiana. As Carl Reiner said, “ A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” And, as much as I hate to admit it---Weather really isn’t all about me.

Esther Blumenfeld (“Weather forecast for tonight: Dark!) George Carlin